Juice Feast-Day 49

Breath Work & Detox


Lately I've discovered I'm a bad breather. By that I mean I periodically find myself having to take deep breaths to "catch up" because I've been breathing too shallow. Breathing serves two important functions. It transports oxygen throughout our bodies (duh), and it also helps rid of the body of waste and toxins. Since this juice feast is all about detoxing and renewal, from this day forward I've set a goal to take 5-10 minutes at least once a day to just sit and focus on my breathing. No thinking, just breathing. I'm also going to "check-in" whenever I think about it throughout the day and take deep breathes to return to my center. To get myself started, I found some great *FREE* resources on the web:

The Meditation Room

(Terrific virtual relaxation experiences that range from 3 to 10 minutes for individuals seeking more serenity and calm. It includes soothing sounds, imagery, and deep-breathing techniques)

Three Breathing Exercises

(Bellows Breath, Relaxing Breath, and Breath Counting. No sounds or images, just text. Compliments of the website of healthy living guru Dr. Andrew Weil.)

Juice Diary-Day 49

(Today's Juices & Supplements)

28 oz water

10 oz water and psyllium/bentonite shake (yucky!)

4 oz orange juice + 3 MSM + 1 B12

74 oz green juice (kale, parsley, spinach, celery, carrots, cucumber, dandelion greens, cilantro, red bell pepper, mini yellow peppers, onion, jalapeno, and garlic).

32 oz watermelon/lime

32 oz water

Total Juice = 110 oz (0.86 gallons)

Total Water = 70 oz (0.55 gallons)

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Sleep & dreams: 7 hrs. I dreamt I split from my husband. In my dream I was mad because he never wanted to do anything "downtown" . It seemed like all he wanted to do was get a boat and spend time on the water. So I took his car and headed downtown. I remember there being lots of traffic and feeling like I didn't know where I was going, but not being the slightest bit worried about it. Consciously, this scenario couldn't be further from my (wedded blissful) reality. But what does it mean?

Exercise: 1 mile hike with dog

Sauna: 20 minutes

Energy: Awesome!!!

Comments: Need to poop! Hoping the psyllium/benonite shake will help with that in the early am. No big changes since yesterday. Trying to increase my fluids today, but still falling way short on the water. Waiting for my Parastroy and Stone Breaker to get here.

Peace Is Every Step

I'm currently reading a great book called Peace Is Every Step-The Path of Mindfulness in Everyday Life. The books is by Vietnamese spiritual leader Thich Nhat Hanh (pronounced Tik * N'yat * Hawn), one of the best known and most respected Zen masters in the world today, as well as a poet, and peace and human rights activist. The book is profound in its simplicity. It talks about everything from the sacredness of washing dishes and eating a tangerine to the benefits of conscious breathing and thinking less. This paperback book is a short 134 pages and worth a read if you get the chance. It's helping me see that there are plenty of ways to fit meditation and mindfulness into my everyday life without having to sit cross-legged on the floor.

Here's a trailer of the 60 minute movie by the same name. The movie can also be found on YouTube. It isn't the same as the book, but still interesting. It's more focused on Waging Peace to avoid war and contains clips and interviews of Thich Nhat Hahn as well as people who survivied the Vietnam war, including American veterans.

Art as Meditation

I'm a lucky girl. Lucky enough to have a whole extra room in my house that is dedicated to nothing but creative pursuits-painting, drawing, sewing, scrapbooking, and any other kind of creative project I feel like taking on. We've lived in our current home for just under a year, and only recently have I starting taking advantage of this creative space.

Art is one of my favorite ways to meditate, that is, as long as I close the door and leave my inner critic out in the hallway. On those blissful occasions when I'm completely tuned in (or out, depending on how you want to look at it :) my mind is devoid of thought, time flys by and I have no awareness of anything-not even of the canvas in front of me. Sometimes I would swear that what I end up creating feels like it came from somewhere else.

Playing piano and running can work the same way for me. I think this kind of "moving meditation" is just as important as sitting still to quiet the mind. Here's what came out of my latest painting meditation...


18" x 28" Acrylic on canvas.

This is one of my favorite paintings by German artist Micheal Sowa. All of his paintings are whimsical and usually depict animals doing something quite unexpected (like a pig leaping joyfully off of a dock into a pond). We have 4 of his prints and all of them always make me smile. I wonder where Micheal Sowa goes when he paints? I think I would like to visit that place :)


Micheal Sowa's "Fowl with Pearls."

A Numbers Game

Here's a simple, but highly effective meditation I ran across while surfing the web. The URL of the website I found it on escapes me (I should have bookmarked it---maybe it will appear to me during a meditation :), but as soon as I find it I'll give credit where credit is due.

The meditation is a counting meditation. All you do is sit quietly and count from 1 to 10 as you breathe. Think 1 as you inhale, 2 as you exahale, 3 as you inhale, 4 as you exhale, etc. Do this until you reach 10 and then reverse and count back down to 1. Now repeat. Sounds simple, no? Umm....not exactly. The catch is that you keep the focus solely on your breathing for a whole 10 minutes. Ha!

Personally, my flabby, untrained mind makes it all of from 1 to 10 and back twice before I become distracted by a myriad of other thoughts (when this happens, just shift the focus back to counting and breating to get yourself back on track). I think this meditation seems like an excellent way to observe the thoughts of the beginner's mind, as well as a good tool for teaching it to stay focused. If you decide to try it, I would recommend using a 10 minute timer (cell phone alarm) to bring yourself out of the meditation. Otherwise, you'll start entertaining thoughts like, "How much longer?" or "Has it been 10 minutes yet?" There will be plenty of other thoughts to distract you anyway, believe me ;)

Birthday Meditations

Birthday's are like your own personal Happy New Year! I was told by a metaphysical teacher once that birthday's are a very powerful day to meditate. If you know what time of day you were born, try to take some time within 10-15 minutes on either side of that time to sit in silence with the universe. I've been doing this on my birthday for years. In fact, my family knows that if they call around the time of day I was born, I probably won't answer. I've had some powerful moments just sitting and basking in the love of the universe. On a few occasions, I've recieved some really great insights and even a few birthday greetings from deceased loved ones. It's a great time to stop and give gratititude and request continued support for the coming year.

When you think about it, there's only so many people in the world who were born on the exact day, hour, minute and second as you. The whole day is magic, but can get an even better connection in that moment if you take time to dial in!

Meditation-Day 2 of MC

I'm not really very good at meditation, although I am very familiar with the concept. That's because I've read books on it, and I've taken classes on it, and I've watched videos on it. None of which, as it turns out, have been a reasonable substitute to actually sitting still and consistently practicing it.

I've have been been able to "tap in" when practicing various forms of moving meditation-playing piano, running and painting. But I want to be able to sit in silence, find my center and really feel connected to GOD. I want to make that still, small voice a louder, larger part of my everyday life.

I've decided that being on the Master Cleanse is the perfect opportunity to begin daily practice, so this afternoon I took some time to sit quietly and meditate on my body detoxing. I lit three candles, one each for my mind, body and spirit and proceeded to sit cross-legged on the floor. I wasn't worried about doing it "right." I just started with a prayer of gratitude and protection, focused on my breathing, and began to visualize a broom sweeping every part of my body clean from head to toe. As I visualized each part of my body becoming clean again, I sent it love and gratitude before moving on.

Throughout the visualization process I got a weird sense (a picture, actually) that my bones were, well, "dry", and that the inside of my pancreas was coated with a crystallized substance ( it looked like sugar to me). I also got a sense that the inside of my bladder was, for lack of a better word, "crusty."

The only reason I took notice of these thoughts was because when I got to these areas I had a harder time "sweeping" them clean in my mind (especially my pancreas). I did manage to clean them, although I did get the feeling that I would need to do this visualization daily in order to really help my body with the detox process. Afterwords I just monitored my thoughts for a while (they were all over the board!), and then spent a few minutes observing what my body was saying ( mainly that my upper back hurt, my stomach was cramping, and my butt felt toasty warm from our floor heat).

Hmm....this has the potential to get very interesting as I get deeper into the cleanse. I plan to meditate daily while on the Master Cleanse, not only to help assist my body with the detoxification process, but in hopes of establishing meditation as part of my daily routine.